Straighterline, TESU, and Upper Level

[timokito]

you can also take financial accounting, its not UL class but it will go in your area of study.

[AJ_Atlanta]

People like Straighterline over the endless reading materials provided by Saylor academy. But if you like less homework and test well, Saylor is the ticket.

Seriously those Saylor courses are too long, longer than most undergrad colleges classes. If they would clean up their site/code (horrible) and reduce them to 90hr range or so I think it then would grow more.

[jlearn25]

So if you study for the Saylor like you would for a CLEP/DSST, is it a decent option? It just so inexpensive to never leave your home

[jlearn25]

Also, is Penn Foster also just skip to the Final Exam for the grade or do you have to take a full class? thx

[bjcheung77]

So if you study for the Saylor like you would for a CLEP/DSST, is it a decent option? It just so inexpensive to never leave your home

Yes, just like studying for any other Proctored exam, either remotely in a test center or at home with ProctorU.
Find comparable course materials and also skim through the Saylor readings, practice final, etc...

Also, is Penn Foster also just skip to the Final Exam for the grade or do you have to take a full class? thx

Penn Foster is a different style of taking classes, it's old school correspondence where everything is using snail mail.
It is Nationally Accredited but some of their courses are ACE Recommend for credit and transfer to TESU as UL.

[davewill]

The test taking process is easy enough with Saylor. The problem is that they dig up their course materials from all over the Internet. Sometimes it's fine, like for Intro to Soc, they had an actual online text book and the course was straightforward. However I used it to study for the environmental ethics TECEP, and it was a nightmare of broken and confused links, redundant reading, and video lectures from a Christian College that were OK, but with "however, we know better" asides I found annoying, not sharing their religion. However the lectures they sourced from Oxford were really good.

[jlearn25]

Penn Foster is a different style of taking classes, it's old school correspondence where everything is using snail mail.
It is Nationally Accredited but some of their courses are ACE Recommend for credit and transfer to TESU as UL.

So Penn Foster i need to take a full class or can i skip to the end and take the exam if I wanted? Also, snail mail...you mean all test are not online and proctor on a site for the tests?

[dfrecore]

So Penn Foster i need to take a full class or can i skip to the end and take the exam if I wanted? Also, snail mail...you mean all test are not online and proctor on a site for the tests?

PF - yes you have to take the class. For Financial Management (which is the equivalent at TESU for Principles of Finance), for example, I took 5 non-proctored exams (and you can retake each one for a better grade if you'd like), and then the non-proctored final exam, which I had to print, create a Word document to answer the questions, and then scan and upload it to the website.

For some courses, you have additional work, including a paper, or webinars to watch and comment on, or proctored finals. For the final, you actually have to have them mail it to the proctor, then you take the exam, then the proctor mails it back to the school. But not every course requires this.

Most of the courses can be done very quickly, I was slow and it took me about 13 days to complete. I would spend several hours on day 1 to do the exam, then a couple of hours on day 2 to correct my wrong answers on the exam. For 5 exams, this was 10 days. Then, the final took me longer, because it was harder. But I know people who have taken the course over a weekend. It just depends on your level of comfort with the material. And what grade you want in the class. With my 5 extra days of work on the exams, I got an A in the class. Without it, I would have gotten a B. I probably could have lived with a C and cut down the amount of time I spent on the final. So from 13 days down to maybe 7, and that was only working 2-3 hours per day on it. I suppose I could have done it in 2-3 days if I'd devoted more time per day.

[Mamasaphire]

PF - yes you have to take the class. For Financial Management (which is the equivalent at TESU for Principles of Finance), for example, I took 5 non-proctored exams (and you can retake each one for a better grade if you'd like), and then the non-proctored final exam, which I had to print, create a Word document to answer the questions, and then scan and upload it to the website.

For some courses, you have additional work, including a paper, or webinars to watch and comment on, or proctored finals. For the final, you actually have to have them mail it to the proctor, then you take the exam, then the proctor mails it back to the school. But not every course requires this.

Most of the courses can be done very quickly, I was slow and it took me about 13 days to complete. I would spend several hours on day 1 to do the exam, then a couple of hours on day 2 to correct my wrong answers on the exam. For 5 exams, this was 10 days. Then, the final took me longer, because it was harder. But I know people who have taken the course over a weekend. It just depends on your level of comfort with the material. And what grade you want in the class. With my 5 extra days of work on the exams, I got an A in the class. Without it, I would have gotten a B. I probably could have lived with a C and cut down the amount of time I spent on the final. So from 13 days down to maybe 7, and that was only working 2-3 hours per day on it. I suppose I could have done it in 2-3 days if I'd devoted more time per day.

Does a PF grade go towards the last 60 credits GPA that grad schools look at?